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Chapter 7 Memory

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Chapter videos narrated by author of the textbook Dr Zimbardo
 Remembering and Forgetting

Imagine an individual repeating a long series of three letters over and over and then determining if he or she had succeeded in memorizing them correctly. This description is the beginning of the study of memory by Hermann Ebbinghaus. Although the study of memory has advanced quite a bit from the days of Ebbinghaus’s initial studies, some of the principles he discovered are painfully evident even today. For example, Ebbinghaus found that much of what we memorize is forgotten within minutes or hours after we first learn it.
To understand memory, psychologists have used the information processing model. This model views memory like a computer, which must encode, store, and then retrieve information. Psychologists have also proposed that memory can be described as having three stages: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. You may be surprised to hear you have a tremendous store of information that lasts for only about a second and then it is gone—this is sensory memory. In order to hold onto memories for more than about a second, we have to move information to short-term memory. However, short- term memory capacity is limited to about 7 plus or minus two elements called chunks. Next time you say a telephone number aloud, listen to the pauses between the first three digits and the next four— these two elements are chunks. Finally, in order to hold onto memories for longer than about 20 seconds, we move information to long-term memory, which has a very large capacity. Unlike sensory memory, however, memories in long-term memory are relatively permanent.
Psychologists have also postulated that how deeply we process information determines our ability to remember. Deeper processing such as understanding the meaning of a word is better than focusing on the size or shape of the letters of a word. 

The picture of memory becomes more complicated when we realize that there are different types of long-term memory: procedural memory, semantic memory, and episodic memory. Knowing how to bowl is an example of procedural memory, remembering the title of person in charge of student housing is an example of semantic memory, and remembering your first date is an example of episodic memory. One of the most interesting memory phenomena occurs when we cannot recall a word or a name yet we feel as if it is on the tip of our tongue.
Retrieving information from memory is not always easy or automatic; many factors are involved. For example, if cues that occurred when you memorized material are present when you try to recall the material, memory will be enhanced. Studies of eyewitnesses reveal their memories can be influenced by the questions they are asked. A major controversy involves repressed memory: Is it possible to be so traumatized by an event such as sexual abuse that an individual does not recall any part of the event for years? One group of experts argues that memories can be repressed; an opposing view points out that we can be led to report memories of events that never happened.

Psychologists have a number of general principles to improve our memories. For example, we can increase the number of study sessions and distribute those sessions across time. A number of special techniques for improving memory, called mnemonics, are also available. In one technique—the method of loci—we associate material to be recalled with familiar locations to aid later recall.
The hippocampus plays a significant role in memory; it is responsible for moving memories from short-term to long-term memory. A famous case shows that a person with a damaged hippocampus lives in world of short-term memory. He cannot put new memories into long- term storage, although what was in long-term storage prior to the damage is not disturbed. Experience can leave its mark on the structure of neurons, especially the number of dendrites. Although this research has only been done on animals, it has significant implications for a number of other fields.

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